🚀 go-pugleaf

Yes, Distant Light has many limitations at this time.

I'm particularly bothered by the hard edged shadows and the fact that it is really a mathematical surface effect, not an actual light source that can be placed in world coordinates.

For example, i've never been able to figure a way to use dynamic lighting to create a realistic campfire.

Also, it looks wonderful on animated poser figures, but is much to slow to be practical in such high-poly dynamic lighting.

Certainly we need dynamic light "types" ("spot", "Point Source", "flood" at least) that can be positioned inside a scene, like other 3D programs have.

Multiple moving dynamic lights are not hard. I played with a scene with a "sun" and "moon" that orbited a scene many months ago. It helps that Distant Light can go right through a sky cone, etc. if set correctly - sorry, i forget the exact setting. I used the Ramp script preset to drive the dynamic lights around their "orbit"

You can check it out at:
 <http://wellmadewebs.com/public/atmo/lighting/day-night/daynight2.html>

The script is at:
 <http://wellmadewebs.com/public/atmo/lighting/day-night/SunControl-2.js>

It's very crude, in that i never got a good blend of sun/moon at dawn and dusk. Also, for some reason my skycone texture does not render - but you can at least see that the effect does work.

Happy to see you active in the forum again Americo and producing more Atmosphere lessons - that's just great!

:)